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"Here we go,in a row, to a signing party. . . ."

Now people are fussing because Barack Obama ordered that a bill from Congress, that required his signature, be signed by an autosignature machine.  Obama signs his signature, and the machine copies it onto letters and cards and whatever requires his signature, times 10,000.  

The Party that controls Congress, that does not pass bills, at all, because anything Congress does has to be paid for with taxes, and taxes are very, very bad, except for the part that pays the salaries of members of Congress--and that is an evil we just have to grit our teeth and admit is evil, but not so evil as if the Democrats controlled the House, and we all know the world is not perfect--that will have to wait for Jesus and Michele Bachmann to come again, but not together, so we really have no choice but to provide health care, and generous benefits, and an even generouser retirement plan for the people who are opposed to those kinds of social benefits for everybody else.


Anyway, those people are offended to the bottom of their fundamentalist hearts that Barack Obama uses an autosignature machine, just as Presidents and insurance companies and political parties and other geeks have done for decades.  


"He should be there, and hold the pen, and sign his own unwanted name!"


I will tell you what is evil!
I will tell you what is offensive!
(That is what I do for a living.)


What is offensive is the Chief Executive sitting there with a row of pens at his side, each of which is engraved with something priceless, pens coveted by the politicians lined up around him because they want to drink something stout, sometime, and show their friends that they have the very pen that signed the bill they were coerced into supporting, and that this is it, the very pen that the President used, with some considerable other identical pens, while he sat there, lamely, trying to remember which character he is supposed to use this pen for.  


That isn't a signature.
That is a joke.


B-a-r-a-c-k O-b-a-m-a:  that is eleven letters.  Eleven pens. 
B-a-r-a-c-k H-u-s-s-e-i-n O-b-a-m-a:  that is eighteen letters.  Eighteen pens.


How many pens do you thing the President hands out?  
Eleven?  Twelve (just an "H")?  Eighteen?
Or maybe about as many as there are people standing in a row?

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